WASHINGTON, DC
Three
Kenyan diplomats are battling vicious multi-million law suits filed
against them by the house helps they allegedly lured and conscripted
into slavish service in the US.
A former Kenyan
diplomat to the UN is facing charges of luring, human-trafficking and
enslaving a countrywoman in the US for over a year.
Former
legal adviser at Kenya’s Mission to the UN, Stella Kerubo Orina, is
also accused of subjecting Ms Beatrice Awuor Oluoch to forced labour for
14 months, between July 10, 2006 and September 4, 2007.
Papers
filed in courts across the United States accuse the three female envoys
– one a human rights lawyer – of cruelty and offences ranging from
trafficking to forced labour up to 16 hours a day and being loaned to
other diplomats to toil without pay.
A common thread in
the three unprecedented cases is that the domestic workers were
promised a higher pay, only to end up being given up to 10 times less.
The
envoys now risk paying fines that could run into hundreds of millions
if the precedence of US courts slapping diplomats found guilty of
maltreating their domestic workers with heavy fines is anything to go
by.
According to documents filed in a Manhattan court,
Ms Oluoch first worked as Ms Orina’s domestic worker in Marlyland as
the envoy served as a legal adviser to the Kenyan Embassy in Washington,
DC between July 10, 2006 and May 31, 2007.
ESCAPE FROM BONDAGE
“Shortly
after Ms Oluoch’s arrival in the US, Stella Kerubo Orina began accusing
Ms Oluoch of having an affair with her husband,” lawyers Amy Rudd and
Lindsey Stelcen for Ms Oluoch claim in the case filed on January 23.
Ms
Oluoch, they allege, continued working for Ms Orina after the human
rights lawyer was posted to the UN Mission in New York on May 31 until
September 4, 2007, when the woman escaped from the alleged bondage. The
former diplomat allegedly made Ms Oluoch to work for 13 hours a day,
seven days a week without adequate pay through “the use of verbal abuse,
threats and legal coercion”.
“Contrary to Ms Oluoch’s
understanding that she would serve primarily as a nanny to the
defendant’s children… the defendant required the plaintiff to perform
virtually all the household duties as well, including cooking, grocery
shopping, laundry, ironing, and house cleaning,” Ms Oluoch’s legal team
alleges.
In the suit, Ms Orina is also facing charges
of fraud, breach of contract, unjust enrichment and failing to pay her
former servant US labour rates as they allegedly agreed in a contract
signed in Nairobi.
Based on the current exchange rates,
the lawyers claim Ms Orina was supposed to pay Ms Oluoch $1,280
(Sh111,360) per month in Maryland and $1,594 (Sh138,643) in New York in
addition to a free room and board.
However, the accused allegedly paid Ms Oluoch $150 (Sh13,000) a month, and never kept records as required by US laws.
Ms
Orina, who currently works at the Foreign Affairs ministry, is also
accused of confiscating and keeping Ms Oluoch’s passport and falsely
reporting to US police that her servant was missing while she was still
working for her, leading to cancellation of Ms Oluoch’s A-3 visa.
A-3
visas are non-immigrant diplomatic documents granted to the attendants
and servants of representatives of foreign governments on A1 visas like
Ms Orina was at that time.
ARRESTED
Consequently,
Ms Oluoch was arrested in Maryland where she had secured a job after
escaping from Ms Orina’s home in Fresh Meadows, New York. The woman was
handcuffed, dragged, and locked up in Baltimore, according to her legal
team.
“As a result of the illegal cancellation of Ms
Oluoch’s A-3 visa, Ms Oluoch was forced to serve a lengthy and expensive
probation period... The arrest and probation prevented Ms Oluoch from
obtaining gainful employment elsewhere,” the lawyers claim.
Ms
Oluoch wants the court to award her damages, all unpaid wages and
overtime plus interest, liquidated damages, attorney’s fees and any
other relief that the court deems fit.
The woman is
currently staying in Maryland on a T visa meant for victims of human
trafficking pursuing cases against their alleged perpetrators.
It
is the third time Ms Oluoch has sued Ms Orina after the first two cases
were dismissed by district courts in Maryland and New York.
Judge
Peter Messitte dismissed the first case filed in Maryland District
Court on January 20, 2011 after Ms Oluoch failed to serve Ms Orina,
eight months after filing the case.
A New York court
threw out the second case on August 28, 2012 over what Judge Thomas
Griesa termed as “insufficient service of the process”.
This
was after Ms Oluoch’s lawyers failed to seek an extension of service
period, rectify the faulty service or oppose Ms Orina’s Motion to
dismiss the suit.
Ms Orina, in an answer to the complaints in the third case, denies the claims and charges filed by Ms Oluoch.
In
the documents filed by her lawyer Aaron Shapiro on July 17, the former
envoy denies luring, human-trafficking, enslaving, breaching contract
and subjecting her former servant to forced labour.
Ms
Oluoch, the lawyer states, “voluntarily” accepted to travel to the US
to continue working for Ms Orina, whom she had been serving since June
2004.
The complainant, he adds, provided her passport
to enable the cancellation and change of her A-3 to G-5 visa to comply
with US laws after her boss was appointed a legal adviser to Kenya
Permanent Mission to the UN.
Mr Shapiro has punched
holes in Ms Oluoch’s case, and filed a notice of Motion seeking to have
five out of the eight charges against Ms Orina struck out.
In
2008 Tanzania diplomat Alan Mzengi and his wife, Stella, were fined
over Sh92 million for holding their domestic worker, Zipora Mazengo,
against her will in Bethsaida, Maryland.
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